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Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Blasphemy Law is Revenge Instrument in Pakistan

And yet another Pakistani Christian is being accused of
blaspheming the false-prophet Muhammad as a tool of revenge in a
Muslim/Christian argument.

Christians in Pakistan are treated as subhuman class of dirt
even being denied proper avenues of education. Why? Because Muslims are taught
in their revered writings – Quran, Hadith and Sira/Sunnah – that Muslims are
superior are to ALL non-Muslims and those non-Muslims should be denigrated for
refusing to believe in Islam.

Needless to say, equal justice for all people is something
that is extremely absent in Islamic dominated societies.

The lack of justice and equal rights are particularly
apparent in Pakistan’s society when Christians risk voicing their opinion that
Christ is the Son of God and Muhammad is a false-prophet. This will get you
beaten or killed by a Muslim mob or escaping public Muslim retribution, put in
jail being charged with the capital crime of blasphemy.

Yet burning a Church, torching a cross or destroying a Holy
Bible will not be treated as a crime in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Christian Shahzad Masih is finding this hatred
of Christians on a first-hand basis.

I was first made aware of Shahzad Masih’s plight in an email
alert from Assist News. I discovered greater details from World Watch Monitor
(WWM) on Shahzad’s persecution. Some of the details differ. For example, Assist
News has Shahzad as age 17 and WWM lists him as age 16. Assist News writes from
the perspective of the mother listed as Hina Shafaqat. WWM uses the father’s
perspective who is listed Shafaqat implying the last name of Masih. One should
realize among Pakistani Christians “Masih” is a Christian honorific.

I am cross posting Assist News first for getting the story
to me and then the WWM article which has better details.

LAHORE, PAKISTAN(ANS -- July 18, 2017) –
A member of an Islamic extremist group in Pakistan has accused a Christian
minor of blasphemy after the boy had an argument with a Muslim, sources said.

Hina Shafaqat, mother of
17-year-old Shahzad Masih, told Morning Star News (http://morningstarnews.org)
that her son had been wrongly implicated in the case by a Muslim colleague with
whom he had a quarrel 10 days ago, and the family has not been able to locate
him since his arrest.

Working as a sweeper at Shamim
Riaz Hospital in Dinga town, Gujrat District, Punjab Province for the past nine
months, Masih had an altercation with hospital pharmacy employee Ishtiaq Ahmed
Jalali, she said. A senior medical officer at the hospital intervened and
calmed the quarrel, but “Jalali nurtured a grudge against my son and has now
plotted this case against him to settle the score,” she said.

“I’ve raised Shahzad as a
devout Roman Catholic – I’ve never taught my children to hate people belonging
to other faiths, which is why I am sure that my son is being wrongly accused of
blasphemy,” she said. “The police arrested my son on Friday [July 14], and
since then we have been trying to locate his whereabouts.”

Neither the Dinga police nor
the Kharian police said they have him in their custody, she said.

“We have searched so many
police stations but have failed to trace him,” she said, adding that police
were torturing the family mentally by not disclosing her son’s location or
revealing his well-being.

According to the Pakistan
correspondent for Morning Star News, Masih, the oldest of five children, is the
family breadwinner along with his father, a daily wage mason. Shahzad Masih
went to school until grade four, after which his family could not afford to
further education.

“We, and the family of my
brother-in-law Rafaqat, had to relocate to a relative’s house on Friday [July
14] to avoid any backlash from the local Muslims, who are being instigated by
an Islamist outfit,” she said.

More than 30 other Christian
families also live in Mohalla Railway Station of Dinga town.

Morning Star News stated that
the police official did note that a First Information Report (FIR No. 273/17)
was registered against Masih under Section 295-C, which calls for death or life
imprisonment to those found guilty of blaspheming against Muhammad, the prophet
of Islam.

According to the FIR,
complainant Nadeem Ahmed – president of the Dinga chapter of Islamist outfit
Tehreek Tahafuz-e-Islam Pakistan – alleged that he was sitting in his
electronic appliances shop when Ishtiaq Ahmed Jalali came and informed him that
Masih had uttered derogatory remarks against Muhammad. Jalali is also a member
of Tehreek Tahafuz-e-Islam Pakistan.

“Upon hearing this, we sent a
boy to Shahzad Masih’s home and asked him to come to the Popular Mobile Shop
for clearing the issue,” Ahmed alleged in the FIR. “When Masih came there, we
asked him about the accusation, to which he again started abusing and cursing
the Holy Prophet. Some people who had gathered at the shop by then also
witnessed the blasphemy done by Masih.”

Ahmed alleged that the
Christian boy “managed to escape from the shop.”

Inspector Ahmad declined to
comment on why he thought Masih had committed blasphemy or if he had admitted
to it.

“You know very well I cannot
repeat the blasphemous words,” he said, avoiding questions as to what could
have motivated the Christian to do such a thing. He also did not offer any
plausible explanation as to how Masih was able to flee from the scene in the
presence of a large number of upset Muslims.

“Talk to the SP, because we
just registered the case and forwarded it to him for further action,” he said
before putting down the phone.

Repeated attempts to reach
Superintendent of Police (SP) Maaz Zafar failed as his telephone operator said
that the senior official was busy and would return the call later. At this
writing, however, Zafar had not contacted Morning Star News.

Attorneys Riaz Anjum and
Kashif Naimat from the Pakistan Center for Law and Justice (PCLJ) told Morning
Star News from Dinga that they had offered legal and financial assistance to
Shahzad Masih’s family as he was one of the main providers of income for the
family, and his arrest had badly degraded their finances.

“The case is clearly
fabricated, because the FIR does not state any motive for Shahzad Masih’s
alleged blasphemy,” Anjum said. “It’s very unfortunate that Pakistani police
book people in blasphemy cases before even trying to ascertain the facts. Now
the boy will be made to suffer in prison like so many other innocent people who
have fallen victim to the harsh blasphemy laws.”

He said that their investigation
had corroborated the account of the Christian family.

“It is true that Masih had a
fight with a pharmacy worker over a week ago, and the matter was resolved by a
doctor,” Anjum said. “Local sources told us that Jalali bore a grudge against
Masih, and he had connived with the complainant, Nadeem Ahmad, to settle his
personal score with the Christian boy.”

A 16-year-old Pakistani
Christian boy has been charged with blasphemy for talking with a colleague
about his belief in Jesus, the second such incident in a month.

Shahzad Masih, 16, a cleaner
at a hospital in the city of Dinga (near the religiously conservative city of
Gujrat), was arrested on 13 July after his colleague, Ishtiaq Ahmed Jalali,
accused him of insulting Islam’s prophet Muhammad, a crime punishable with
death in Pakistan.

The latest incident took
place at the Shameem Riaz Polyclinic. Jalali, who works at the hospital
pharmacy, is a member of Tehreek-e-Tahfuz-e-Islam Pakistan, an
organisation that strives to protect the name and honour of Muhammad. It
belongs to the Barelvi school [Blog Editor: Barelvi extremist Islamism has
developed according Left-Wing news siteHuffPo] of Islamic
thought, which is considered “moderate” and has even faced criticism from other
Muslims for its “polytheism” of worshipping at shrines. Barelvis are known for
the special respect they afford to Muhammad – more so than any other Islamic
school of thought – and are chief supporters of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

Shahzad Masih’s father,
Shafaqat, who works as a labourer, told World Watch Monitor that the argument
related to who Christians worship.

“My son told him that we
follow Jesus and then their discussion became sour, at which point a doctor
intervened and calmed them down,” he said.

The police complaint was
lodged by another man, Nadeem Ahmed, who claims to have called Shahzad Masih
from his mobile phone repair shop, which is beside the hospital, to ask him
about what he’d said. In his report, Ahmed states that Masih repeated his
“abusive words” against Muhammad and then fled.

Police reports in Pakistan,
called First Information Reports (FIR), are often key in court cases, though
the veracity of the claims in such reports is often the subject of contention.

Shafaqat Masih says that two
days prior to the lodging of the FIR, his son’s colleague, Ishtiaq Jalali, told
his son that Christians worship at the shrines of Muslim sages.

“My son told him that he
didn’t know about this and he would ask me about it,” Shafaqat Masih said.
“Then on 13 July, I was at work when he called me at around 4pm. He had
returned from hospital but they asked him to come to the mobile phone repair
shop, which is in front of the hospital.

“I told him that it would
take me some time to get there, so he should call his uncle, Rafaqat, whom I
also called on the phone to go to him. I arrived at around 7pm at the hospital,
where they all had gathered. We tried to intervene, but they did not let us
talk. Then they told us that they did not want to make the matter public and
wanted to settle it amicably. At the same time, they kept calling others to
join them and a large number of clerics gathered while we three were all alone
[Shahzad, his father and uncle].

“One of the clerics told me
that the head of a nearby madrassah had called them to the madrassah to settle
the matter, after which the entire mob went there.

“[His uncle] Rafaqat and I
also went there, but I sent Rafaqat to go inside along with Shahzad, who they
had in their custody. The leader of the group argued that the crime committed
by Shahzad was punishable with death alone. While they were discussing this,
two police vans arrived. The chief policeman asked for Shahzad, but they were
reluctant to give him up and only handed him over on the promise that the
decision would be taken the next morning. As I was standing outside, I saw the
police taking Shahzad along with them, but since then they haven’t allowed us
to see him.”

The police chief, Shahbaz
Hinjra, told a local newspaperthat
Masih was in their custody and that they were investigating the matter.

Former Punjab parliamentarian
Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, leader of the largest Christian political party, told
World Watch Monitor that he had personally investigated the matter and found
that initial argument had centred over Shahzad Masih’s colleague’s attempts to
convert him to Islam.

“When our people try to
defend themselves and their faith then often it becomes an issue and later such
cases are lodged,” he said.

Masih’s father says he and
his family have been on the run ever since. “We don’t even know what to eat and
where to live,” he said.

His uncle, Rafaqat, told
World Watch Monitor that there are about 25 Christian families in the area and
no such incident had ever taken place before.

The Tehreek-e-Tahfuz-e-Islam
Pakistan website claims that no suspect has yet been awarded the death
penalty under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, even though the Christian womanAsia Bibihas been on
death row for blasphemy since 2010. The website also says that liberal Muslims
want to amend the current blasphemy law and must be stopped – a key reason for
the organisation’s founding 10 years ago. In April,a Muslim student was beaten to deathin
the city of Mardan following an accusation of blasphemy.

Aasiya
Noreen, commonly known as Asia Bibi, received the death penalty in 2010 after
she allegedly made derogatory comments about Islam’s prophet Muhammad during an
argument with a Muslim woman.

While
the two women were working together, the Muslim woman had refused water from
Bibi on the grounds that it was “unclean” because it had been handled by a
Christian.

The
Muslim woman, together with her sister, were the only two witnesses in the
case, but the defence failed to convince the appeals judges that their evidence
lacked credibility.

In
the High Court appeal hearing in October 2014, Bibi’s lawyer, Naeem Shakir,
argued that the main complainant in the case, the local Muslim cleric Mohamed
Salaam, had not heard Bibi blaspheme, and that his original complaint had been
lodged five days after the women’s quarrel. Shakir argued in his appeal that
during the trial the only reason given for this delay was “deliberation and
consultation”, and said that Salaam had acknowledged this in court.

Salaam
was filmed by an international film crew who made a film about Bibi in May/June
2014, saying that it is his religious obligation to defend the dignity of
Muhammad and that is why he decided to be a witness before the court. He only
heard Bibi allegedly confess to blasphemy when she had been brought before a
village council several days after the quarrel.

Her
other main accuser, Mohamed Imran, the owner of the field in which she worked,
had not been present at the time of the quarrel either; he was away from the
village.

Bibi’s
case attracted widespread global attention, much of it critical of Pakistan’s
anti-blasphemy laws, which critics contend are routinely abused as a pretext to
settle personal scores. Two prominent Pakistani politicians were assassinated
in 2010 after they spoke publicly in Bibi’s defence.

About the writer: Dan Wooding, 76, is an
award-winning winning author, broadcaster and journalist who was born in
Nigeria of British missionary parents, and is now living in Southern California
with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for

more than 54 years. They
have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK.
Dan is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints
in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS). He is also the author of
some 45 books and has two US-based TV programs –- “Windows on the World” (with
Garry Ansdell) and “Inside Hollywood with Dan Wooding” -- which are both
broadcast on the Holy Spirit Broadcasting Network (http://hsbn.tv/), and also a weekly radio show called
“Front Page Radio” on the KWVE Radio Network (www.kwve.com).

You may republish this or any of our ANS
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that they can receive a complimentary subscription to our news service by going
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